John Searle on Language & Social Ontology

source: Philosophical Overdose     2013年6月11日
In this talk, John Searle attempts to explain how human institutional facts are created and maintained by a specific type of linguistic representation (i.e. a status function declaration). This creates and maintains systems of deontic power: rights, duties, obligations and empowerments of various kinds. And these provide the glue that hold human society together. They do such by providing humans with desire independent reasons for action, that is, reasons for doing things that are independent of one's immediate inclinations.
This talk was given at the University of Oslo in May 2011. I don't own it.